Abstract: This interview of
1:00:51 hours is with Suyapa Gricelda Portillo Villeda, PhD,
assistant professor of Chicana/o-Latina/o-Transnational Studies at
Pitzer College in Claremont, California at approximately 8:00 pm on
Tuesday, April 18, 2017. The interview was conducted by Diana
Nightingale, a graduate student in Claremont Graduate University's
M.A. History and Archival Studies program. The interview was part of
a final project for a CGU seminar called "Introduction to Oral
History and Theory" taught by associate professor of History, JoAnna
Poblete, PhD., at Claremont Graduate University. Dr. Portillo was
born in Copán, Honduras and moved with her mother to San Pedro Sula
when she was seven after her parents' divorce. In 1982, when she was
nine, she and her mother migrated to the United States, passing
through Guatemala and Mexico, and crossing the border through
Tijuana. They moved into Echo Park where her mother constructed a
social network, found work and a place for them to live. Dr.
Portillo also began attending a local elementary school. Her mother
eventually met Dr. Portillo's step-father, after which they moved to
Highland Park where she began a new school. She learned English
fairly quickly after being enrolled in an all-English classroom, and
by eighth grade was a nearly fluent English speaker. She was a very
good student attending numerous honors classes. In high school, she
also joined the track team and became one of their star athletes,
winning numerous medals. She would continue to run track at Pitzer
College where she completed her Bachelors degree. After graduation,
she worked with numerous labor unions in Los Angeles as a union
coordinator. She also traveled throughout Latin America, even being
able to return and visit her home town of Copán. In 2004,she began
at Cornell University's history graduate program, from which she
received her doctoral degree in 2011 in receipt of her dissertation
"Campeñas and Campeños: Life and Work in the Banana Fincas of the
North Coast of Honduras, 1944-1957." Since receiving her doctoral
degree, she has given numerous conference and guest talks,
interviews, and written for news and journal sources about her
dissertation research, Honduras's political and social changes, and
human rights violations against Hondurans and Honduran immigrants,
particularly the increase in violence against women and members of
the Honduran LGBTQ community. In this interview Dr. Portillo
discusses her childhood and teenage experiences of the various
shifts in her surroundings, and social and cultural circles she
entered as she moved from a small, intimate town in Honduras to San
Pedro Sula, one of Honduras' largest cities, and then to the
mega-city of the Los Angeles metropolitan region after making the
treacherous migratory journey with her mother from Honduras to the
United States in 1982. She discusses the difficulties her mother
faced after they moved into Echo Park as she attempted to secure a
place to live, find work, and save up money. In addition, she talks
a lot about the trauma of these transitions as a child and teenager
adapting to a very different culture in the United States' public
school system as opposed to what she was familiar with in Honduras.
In recalling these years of her life she talks about the prejudice
and bullying she experienced, and a strong sense of being out of
place or not fitting in with her American-born peers.
Note
Includes a transcript of the interview.